HACKER Q&A
📣 handsandwhich

How can you make quick money?


Hi HN.

I'm in between jobs currently and am wanting to make some extra cash. I'm a full stack engineer with about 6 years of professional experience. Very confident in my craft, and just beginning to apply to jobs at mid-large companies.

Thing about mid-large companies is their hiring processes can be SLOW and I could use the cashflow sooner rather than later.

So I'm curious if anyone here has ideas on how to make quick cash within a week/month. Would love to leverage my engineering skillset (web development-react,typescript,node,postgres) but am open to any and all ideas folks may have.

Currently residing in the US.


  👤 rantallion Accepted Answer ✓
How to start earning money within a week: apply to start-ups.

I'm not sure if the landscape is different in the US. Here in the UK, start-ups will snap your hand off to get you through the door. When I last went through a round of interviews, I was getting from my initial chat with a recruiter to the final interview in a matter of days, and most of the offers would have allowed an immediate start had I been available.


👤 fakeElonMusk
I freelance full time. Sign up for TopTal or Gun.io - if you're good you'll get work immediately. The rate is up to you but likely somewhere between $50-$100/hr. I'm on both platforms and see jobs every week for React. Some are full time, others are 10-20hrs / week. You can even continue on the side once you get a full time job. I get LinkedIn recruiter messages every week and most of the time the rates are terrible, so haven't had much luck there. HN seeking freelancer also has contract / part time gigs occasionally.

👤 gcheong
Contracting - I don't know the status of this company, and never personally used them, but I thought they seemed interesting: https://www.moonlightwork.com, or see if anyone in your network needs some contracting work done.

Uber/Lyft driver

Door-dashing


👤 f0e4c2f7
Do you have a LinkedIn account? Login and start talking to recruiters. Ask for contracts / consulting. Consider offering 1 off services that can be executed especially quickly.

Though any method like this works better with time.

It is annoying that there's a slight lag on being able to monetize software skills. Especially with the amount of demand. I've never really heard of anyone having good luck with marketplaces like Upwork. Seems like a lot of low paying gigs and scams.


👤 ericmay
Not sure where you live in the US, but I see a lot of job postings for contract work, especially on startup-oriented slack channels. If you can afford to not be picky I'm sure you'd find some companies very eager to have you build some predefined piece of technology (website, database, w/e) for $25/hour or so or for a fixed bid.

👤 b20000
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